Reality television series that rely on Southern and backwoods stereotypes work best if they keep you guessing: Is this show serious, or is it a sly parody? “Branson Famous,” which begins Monday on TruTV, at least tries to walk this tricky line. The one episode provided for review isn’t enough to gauge how well it succeeds, but it certainly makes you curious to see a second, because either this show is sheer genius or it’s the dumbest offering of the year.

“Branson Famous” is a backstage look at the Baldknobbers Jamboree, a revue operated by the Mabe family in Branson, Mo., since 1959. (If you’re going, be sure to stay at the Baldknobbers Motor Inn!) The jamboree used to have the market pretty much to itself, but Branson these days is choked with stage shows and, we’re told in the premiere, the Mabes are struggling to keep their enterprise afloat.

The jamboree is not exactly high art; it features, among other things, a guy wearing fake buck teeth and an idiotic hat. The family has apparently realized that the “Hee Haw”mind-set isn’t selling anymore and wants to modernize the show. Much of the premiere is devoted to auditioning potential new vocalists in search of someone young and maybe a little sexy.

But not too sexy. Even before the auditions are over, Megan, who had been what qualifies as a hottie in Baldknobber land, is complaining about one candidate, Heather, who is hotter and, she fears, will steal her beau, Brandon, whom she herself stole from someone else a few years before.

And here is where “Branson Famous” winks at itself. These and other family dynamics are conveyed through musical vignettes sung directly to the camera — cheesy couplets parodying the musical melodrama that still defines country music for a lot of people who don’t know the genre.

“Megan came in like a sweet rain, then she tore through my family like a hurricane,” Brandon’s mother, Patty, sings. “She latched on to my son, now she’s got him convinced that she is the one. All she is is pain.”

It’s pretty hilarious, and it’s made more so by a side plot involving a Mabe daughter, Breezy, who wants to sing in the show but has a voice that could set off a boom in the earplug industry.

So there you have it: a television show about a stage show that is looking to modernize, ostensibly by freshening its stage presentation but actually by capitalizing on the reality-TV genre and the fame it can bring. Are these bumpkins as lowbrow and unsophisticated as they appear? Don’t bet on it.